I've been using the HT-B since 2003 but my heater coil broke. When I saw the 2k+ upgrade I decided to go all the way since it reduced my costs.
Like all HT products, it's on the expensive side but I think you get a fair value. They really improved things! The heater coil is better supported to last longer. You also get a new eject solenoid with an improved mount and protective cover.
But the biggest improvements are the new rotary knobs, new temperature probes (1 for environment and 1 for bean mass) and a USB interface with built-in support from Artisan.
It took a few hours to do the rebuild as almost everything is new but I took overnight so I could thoroughly clean my gummed up roaster. (It's hard to say but that thing had probably roasted over a ton of coffee.)
I soaked all metal in Oxi-Clean overnight then hosed it off. It really looks like new and just now starting to break-in after eight weeks or so.
I'm really glad I waited for this upgrade. It's so easy to use Artisan with the delta-T graphs and temperature future projections to get the curves very close even on the first batch of new beans. For subsequent roasts I can overlay the new graphs over the old to compensate for my previous mistakes.
The heater can now be adjusted in 1% increments but I didn't really need that much granularity. (Maybe in the future the software will automatically match the roast to my input curve like a self driving car.)
It was expensive ($560) but I got a lot of new parts in addition to the great new features.
